Page 29

Conversations with Friends

Abi

I didn’t expect him to text me through my entire shift.

It was a pretty quiet night at Benny’s, so I had plenty of time to waste on my phone.

But the thing of it was, I usually didn’t waste much time on my phone because I just didn’t have anyone to text with.

Sometimes Lauren might send a quick note, but more often than not I just scrolled on my phone for a few minutes before putting it away and staring into space.

Brainstorming and getting lost in my stories.

So I didn’t usually engage in conversation with another human on my phone at work.

(Well, unless my mom had drama, but that was another thing entirely.)

I quickly discovered that work was a lot more fun when he was texting all night. It was all about nothing: what he was watching on TV, what Warren had emailed him about, what his mom was texting him about.

Spoiler: She was texting him about me.

Apparently we’d done such a fantastic job as a couple that everyone he knew was blowing up his phone to tell him how much they loved me. Which made me feel really great because—see previous comment about not having many friends.

Not only was I a generally awkward person, but I didn’t usually put myself out there to talk to people I didn’t know. So the fact that I’d been forced to socially engage with upper-upper-class strangers and those people had actually liked me?

Well, that was really kind of a fantastic miracle.

When my shift finally ended and I was starting his car, I had to send him a text.

Because driving that beast to work was the most fun I’d ever had behind the wheel. That car hauled ass while still handling like a smooth luxury vehicle, and I was in love with it.

I texted: So tell me more about this custom car you had built. Like someone put it together from a kit?

He responded: No. Webb selects parts from his favorite motors and builds a customized vehicle. So the car you’re driving has a Maserati engine, a Porsche body, and the interior of a Bentley Flying Spur.

Mind-blowing.

I texted: First of all, a Flying Spur is a ridiculous name for a luxurious car. It sounds like a touristy dude ranch. So where does the 1290 come from?

Dex: He registers the car when he’s done, just to create a record of the finished product, and he has me choose the numbers. 1290 are the last four digits of my grandfather’s Social Security number.

I replied: Seriously?

Dex: I swear to God.

We texted back and forth for the rest of the night, and just before I climbed into his luxurious bed, he actually called me.

“Why are you calling me?” I answered, unaccountably glad that he was. “Afraid you couldn’t sleep without hearing my voice?”

“Maybe,” he said, and his deep voice sounded so flirty that it kind of curled my toes. “Or maybe I needed confirmation it actually was you since I gave you my grandpa’s last four.”

“Yeah, that was a dumb thing to do. Let’s go with the second as the official reason,” I flirted back. “Even though we both know it was the first.”

“Do we?” he said, and the way he said it made my stomach dip as I slid under his heavy comforter.

“Don’t we?” I replied, then realized I was precariously close to giggling like a lovesick middle schooler as I teased him.

“So,” I said, clearing my throat and changing the subject before I made a fool of myself. “Did you know that I’ve never been as comfortable as I am in your ridiculously decadent bed? After I leave on Friday, it is going to kill me every time I clean your apartment.”

“Is it weird that I’ve never considered the idea that you would go back to cleaning my apartment after this week?” he asked.

“Yeah, I just realized that a little bit ago myself.”

It wasn’t just weird; it was depressing. I didn’t have a problem with our differences, as far as the fact that I was a virtually penniless part-time maid, while he was a millionaire. I was good with the reality of who I was and wasn’t ashamed to clean a toilet.

But the closure that would come with once again scrubbing his toilet was going to sting.

“I don’t want you to,” he said, suddenly serious.

“What?”

“I…don’t want you to.” He paused for a second, almost like he was just receiving this information himself and needed to process it. “I don’t want to mess with your job, Ab, but…God, it just feels ick, doesn’t it, the thought of you having to clean up after me now that we know each other?”

It did , but I had a feeling it was more uncomfortable for him because he’d probably always thought of “housekeeping” as some faceless entity, not a person he could actually be friends with.

Regardless, I didn’t want to talk about the “after,” not like that.

So instead I said, “It could be fun messing with your stuff and leaving things in drawers.”

“What do you mean, leaving things in drawers?”

“Baby tarantulas or perhaps my new pet snake.”

“You have a snake?”

“No, but I could,” I said.

“Because no fur?”

“Because no fur,” I agreed, for some reason pleased he remembered my allergy. It felt nice that he remembered this personal piece of information about me.

“Do you really want to land back in please don’t fire me territory again, though?” he teased.

“You wouldn’t do that, would you?”

“Don’t push me,” he said, but I knew he wouldn’t. “You don’t want to find out.”

“Okay, well, back to my point. I’m super excited to sleep in this monster bed again. Is this thing custom-built? For a princess? Because I never dreamed a bed could be this comfortable.”

“No, I ordered it from CrashPad. You’re forgetting my family did furniture. It would be a travesty if my beds weren’t the most comfortable, wouldn’t it?”

“I guess I forgot about that,” I said, rolling over and snuggling into the pillow. “Does that mean everything in this apartment is from CrashPad?”

“Of course it does—as if I could buy furniture from anywhere else. My furniture here in New York was purchased at CrashPad, too.”

“Man, Nana Marian would freak out if she saw the particleboard coffee table that I bought at Target. And my entire bedroom set came from Amazon. She would hate me even more if she saw those things.”

“You’ve got her all wrong,” he said. “She snapped at you because she gets pissed when she forgets things. Trust me—Nana Marian is a brilliant, sweet lady who knows more about furniture than I’ll ever learn.”

I pictured her face and didn’t believe him. “I still stand by my previous answer that she would hate my furniture.”

“Well, she absolutely would,” he said. “But not because she’s a snob.

It’s just because she appreciates the value of good-quality, handcrafted furniture.

She was actually the one to come up with the scratch-and-dent center, where people can get good-quality furniture for half off. She wanted that. She made that happen.”

“That’s nice,” I said, wondering why I suddenly wished she liked me. Maybe it was because Declan thought she was sweet and brilliant. Obviously there was more to her than I’d seen, and it felt like a rejection, somehow, that I’d yet to see that side of her. “I’m going to bed now.”

“Yeah, same,” he agreed, and I heard him yawn. “Good night, Abi Mariano.”

“Good night, Declan Powell,” I said, my heart pinching just a little as I ended the call.

After we hung up, I burrowed my head into the big pillow, but now I even had questions about that.

Was I sleeping on his actual pillow, the one he slept on every night?

And why in God’s name did the thought of that make me happy?